When the sign outside your church reads, "Jesus had two dads and he turned out OK" - you are going to attract attention.
Father Rod Bower from Gosford Anglican Church has been making regular changes to the messages outside his church to try to encourage his parishioners, and others, to think a little bit about the election issues of 2013.
"We've had an overwhelmingly positive reaction but certainly in the last few weeks when we've been commenting on election issues it's certainly brought a few people out who have had some very strong views in the other direction."
Fr Rod's signs have been picked up by international media, including the Huffington Post, and widely shared on social media. The one he suspects has had the biggest audience said, "Dear Christians, some people are gay, get over it, love God."
"That was one of the signs that really went viral, it's hard to say how many views it's had but some people have suggested about 20 million which is quite incredible."
"The overwhelming response has been positive but there have been some conservative Christians who have struggled with that whole concept,"
"There was on gay man from Brisbane who wrote me a lovely letter saying he'd been excluded by the Church for many years and that when he read (the sign) something in him was healed. I think that's just amazing."
The Anglican Church at times has a fraught relationship between Sydney and regional parishes, so has Fr Rod risked the ire of Church seniors?
"The Christian church is a very big jungle indeed and everybody gets a tree and sometimes they're a different tree, but the tree that we're interested in growing is a tree that preaches the gospel of inclusiveness and acceptance,"
"My vocation is to try and speak the words of Jesus as we find them in the gospel and the concepts of Jesus into the current situation wherever that may be."
"I guess there are many people who interpret these things in different manners but I can only follow what I believe to be true and that is a Jesus who practised radical inclusion."
Father Rod says he has been accused of being gay, of being a Labor Party stooge, a Liberal party stooge and even a communist.
"My wife responded to one of those posts by saying, "If Rod was gay he'd be in very good company but we've been happily married for years,"
"People filter what they read and what they see through their own filters and they'll come to their own conclusions,"
"I've tried to be balanced in the critiques of what's been going on in the election campaign but my purpose is always to try and breathe the gospel message into the society in which we live and that is always a message of caring for the poor, it is always a message of compassion and radical hospitality."
"I guess the people we want to speak to aren't the conservative people, we want to say to people that that sort of conservative, biblically literalist Christianity that so many people and so many people find helpful in their lives, I don't want to denigrate that in any way, but there's a whole heap of people in our community who won't go anywhere near that kind of Christianity and we want to say to them there are other ways of being Christian."
"I don't want to tell my parishioners how to vote at all, that's not what we're into. But I would hope they would go, not just my parishioners but the whole country, that they would go to the polls with an open and generous heart and seriously consider the policies of whatever policy they're going to vote for and go to the polls with at least some mindfulness of those who are less fortunate than most of us."
Carol Duncan's interview with Fr Rod Bower is attached to this story.
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